History
of the Town of WilmurtFrom Nathaniel Benton's History of Herkimer County,
1856.

Is the largest
town in the county, and probably in the state, and contains that part
of the county commencing at the southwest corner of the town of Morehouse
(in Hamilton county), and running westerly on the north line of the Jerseyfield
patent, until it strikes the West Canada creek; thence continuing the
same course of said Jerseyfield line, until it strikes the west line of
Herkimer county; thence northerly, on said line, until it strikes the
north boundary line; thence easterly, along the north bounds of said county,
until it strikes the northwest corner of the town of Morehouse; thence
southerly, on said line, to the place of beginning.

Within these
boundaries are all those parts of Remsemburgh and Vroman's patents, Adgate's,
Brown's, Nobleborough, Moose river and Watson's tracts, and Totten and
Crossfield's purchase, which lie in the county.

This town
has trebled its population in five years, to be attributed to the increase
of the lumber business, under the direction of the Messrs. Hinckley and
others, who are largely engaged in that trade in the north part of the
county. The legislature have heretofore appropriated $5000, to remove
obstructions from the West Canada creek; obstructions which hindered the
floating of logs and unsawed lumber from the sources of the creek, during
the spring floods, to an extensive set of mills in operation near Prospect,
Oneida county, where many millions of feet of boards, plank and other
sawed lumber are cut out annually, and sent to market.

The machinery
of these mills, and all the arrangements for booming and securing the
logs, bringing them to the ways, where they are to be taken on to the
saw carriages, and for removing the plank and boards when sawed, and disposing
of the refuse stuff, are spoken of as being equal to any similar establishment
in the county. The mineral regions of this town will be approached, if
not immediately intersected, by the Saratoga and Sackets Harbor rail road.

In 1792,
Alexander Macomb, of New York, purchased of the state 1,920,000 acres
of land, at nine pence per acre, lying in the northern part of the state,
and the same year John Brown, of Rhode Island, bought of Macomb, or obtained
the title to, about two hundred thousand acres of that purchase, which
was afterwards divided into eight townships, numbered from one to eight
inclusive, and townships number one, two, six and seven were also subdivided
into small lots. This tract does not lay on Moose river proper, and only
a small triangular point of township number eight extends into Hamilton
county. The westerly parts of towns one, two, three and four are in Lewis
county. This has been many years called Brown's tract. According to Burr's
map of the county, a northerly branch of the Moose river runs through
the southern portion of the tract. Mr. Brown visited his lands near the
close of the last century, made some improvements in the way of opening
roads, building houses and erecting mills, intending and expecting to
make sale of them. Mr. Brown died, however, before he realized any of
his anticipations, and no doubt a great many more men will die before
that wilderness will be seen "to blossom as the rose." In 1846,
the commissioners of the land office were offered five cents an acre for
a considerable portion of townships one and two, but they refused to take
less than eight cents an acre.

A son-in-law
of Brown, Mr. Charles F. Herreshoff, went on to the tract a few years
after the death of Brown, for the purpose of making permanent improvements
upon it and bringing the lands into market. This project was quite as
visionary, far more expensive, and in the end, more fatal to the projector,
than the antecedent one had been to Brown. Herreshoff expended a large
sum of money in clearing up the lands, repairing the former mills built
by Brown, and erecting new ones, in building houses and opening roads,
and at one time had gathered around him some thirty or forty families.
He also erected some iron works in township number seven, and actually
succeeded, it is reported, in making about one ton of iron. But Herreshoff's
outlays were large, and it required something more "to speed the
plough" than could be raised on the tract, or from the proceeds of
the iron; he therefore resorted to the expedient, which he doubtless had
often indulged in before, of drawing on his friends in Providence for
the needful means to consummate a dearly cherished object. The draft was
returned to him protested; he felt dishonor keenly, and deliberately shot
himself through the head with a pistol. He was ardent, ambitious, probably
visionary, and could not have had much practical experience of the business
he was engaged in; and if he died "as a fool dieth," it was
a choice of evils with him. He preferred death, a suicidal exit from the
world, to the crushing endurance of mortified feelings, groping his way
through life in poverty, and as he thought, covered with dishonor.

After Herreshoff's
death the people he had brought there left the settlement, and iron works,
mills, barns and houses, with one exception, went rapidly to decay. It
is understood that sometimes one and then another family has been found
bold and hardy enough to keep watch and ward on the tract since Herreshoff
died. A great portion of the tract, if not all of it, has been sold for
arrears of taxes and bid in by the state.

In 1815,
a Mr. Noble, a venerable patriarch, and nephew of the patentee of Nobleborough
patent, had found his way there through the woods, and was enjoying a
wilderness life as he best could in a green old age. It will be observed
that this large tract was purchased of the state by Arthur Noble in 1787;
he made some improvement on these lands as early as 1790, and then erected
a sawmill and had some boards sawed out which he took to Ireland. The
settlement broke up and another effort to colonize the tract, in 1793,
was made with the like success. The remains of a grist and sawmill were
seen at this setllement about the year 1811 by Mr. William Bensley of
Newport. Mr. Noble must have been influenced by a monomania like that
of John Brown's, when he caused a carrigae road to be cut and cleared
to his lands, over which he passed in his coach. Mr. Noble sojourned for
a time at Little Falls while his experiments in the woods were going on,
but finally returned to Scotland, where he died many years since. There
are large quantities of excellent timber on the lands in this town, of
almost every description, except pine, found in our northern latitude.
Portions of the suface are broken and stony, and other portions can be
brought under cultivation and will make fair grazing lands. The iron mines
of this region are spoken of as rich and inexhaustible.